worship.leadership

The Heart of Worship: Knowing God

Let’s say you and I convened at Starbucks for a little ‘catching up’. After we discuss the weather, determine whether the coffee we’re drinking was worth our entire paycheck, and just make some small talk, you begin to tell me how much you’ve enjoyed getting to know my wife, Emily.

You went on to describe how her love for sports, particularly cricket, inspires you. Also how her skills as an underwater basket weaver were breathtaking. And the fact that she can slam dunk and played college basketball was… wow… simply incredible.

I look at you funny. Emily is quite gifted at many other things, but not basket weaving. And she didn’t play college basketball. Simply not true. Your “doctrine” or “theology” of Emily would be wrong. No matter how passionate you were about describing what she could do, it wouldn’t really honor her because it’s not true.

It’s the same with us and God, especially as worship leaders. There is no authentic worship if we are singing things about God that are not true or if we have a skewed mental image of His character, right? Does our worship really honor him if we don’t know him?

I’m not here today to beat you up and say you don’t know enough about God to be leading worship. But I am here to say that this should be a life-long pursuit if you want to be a worship leader. As Christians, it’s easy to start and stop our life and ministry on “loving God”. “God has done this or that, I’m so passionate about Him, I love Him, etc.”

But what do you KNOW about this God? What is He like? A true knowledge of God will fuel deep passion for God.

The intensity and strength of your worship leading depends on your knowledge of God. It’s the difference between leading people to a good emotional performance or to an encounter with God.

So, what do you KNOW about Him that made you want to be a worship leader in the first place?

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

Related

I think it is wonderful that you are calling worship leaders to accountability for the depth of knowledge of God…in each leaders personal experience….This kind of knowledge is intimate and will set your heart afire. Passion. You can’t fake it…..as a Christian counselor with a calling for helping lead the brokenhearted to the mender of hearts, Jesus….I agree with you 101%. Keep up the good work of getting to know Jesus like a bridegroom does his bride!

About

This blog exists to help worship leaders do what they do better.

Sometimes it’s hard to reconcile the big concert stages with the every day practicality of leading worship in the local church. I want to help connect the dots. My writings are brief, practical, and applicable to being a worship leader in the local church today. Thanks for stopping by. I am a Worship Pastor at Allison Park Church in Pittsburgh, PA. You may or may not be a worship leader. Even thought I gear my writings towards that audience, I write plenty of content on leadership, devotional life, music, and ministry.